How To Say Goodbye in The Language of Love and Loss
by Lord Harrison
Summary: Arthur is dead. He's been granted a twenty-four hour pass to visit Earth. Everyone, though, has more or less been able to move on without him - including Francis. And perhaps it's time that Arthur does, too. One-shot.


"Twenty-four hours." The overseer moves his hand over a deck of cards, and the cards scatter. "You can split them into as many intervals as you wish. But it's all you get." He picks up a card, the ace of hearts, and lets it float; Arthur watches as it's slowly shredded in half, and then again, and again.

"How many intervals do people usually split their hours into?" he inquires, genuinely curious, even though he's already decided on how he's going to divvy up his time.

The overseer grins, displaying four rows of small, shark-like teeth; two of them line the sides of his mouth in a vertical slope. "At first, twenty-four, or twelve. People want to conserve their time, you know? Make the best of it as they can. Save it, have every minute count, you know the works."

"At first?" Arthur pushes.

"But then, once they're down there, they become greedy, and they just keep extending their time. Twenty more minutes to watch my lover go about their day! Another forty because I can't bear to leave when they're crying like this; it's too sad of a note. I have to comfort them with my invisible, ghostly presence. So an hour more. Maybe two. Ah, fuck it, I only have ten minutes left anyway — might as well use them now."

"That won't happen to me," Arthur says stubbornly.

"You'll see, Arthur Kirkland. The dead do not want to stay dead, however pleasant their afterlife may be. The dead always have a way of finishing their business in life."

"I'd like six visits for four hours each, please," Arthur presses on. He's tired of this chatter and just wants to return to Earth as soon as possible. It's been six months since he died, and he misses everyone terribly.

The overseer nods. "Very well." He waves his hand over the shredded pieces of the ace of hearts, and the card magically stitches itself back together. When it's complete, the hearts have become spades. "You have four hours, starting this minute. Have fun."

"You too, old sport," Arthur says automatically, before he remembers the overseer isn't going anywhere. He ducks his head in embarrassment, but it doesn't matter anyway because by the time he lifts his eyes again he's no longer in the realm of the dead but rather he's standing on the palpable, compact earth beside the sea and the stars.

* * *

Six months is a long time. For the dead, time is almost frozen for them — the way time freezes for a prison inmate behind bars who emerges from their sentence years later with no recognition of what's changed. It's the same for Arthur. He doesn't want to waste a second of his precious four hours, but he can't help but move slowly as he walks along the stretch of the city, revering all that is around him.

He's missed it all and he can't even really begin to comprehend how much. He touches every building as he passes it, kisses every unknowing bird which he manages to get close to, and even rubs his hands together to stifle the night chill that he hasn't felt in what seems like _years_. His body is still just an apparition that only he himself can see, but at least he can _hear and smell and feel _all the things around him. That is all that matters.

And see, of course. He can see. In the other world, the dead would not learn of the passings on earth unless one of their loved ones joined them up there and updated them with news.

Arthur heads for the location of his nearest loved one first. Matthew is a grown boy, seventeen now, living in the residence of the city university. Arthur passes through six walls and two doors to get to him, and when he reaches him, there is still too much distance between them that he cannot get rid of. He wishes that it'd been day instead of night so he could watch Matthew going at his daily going-ons in his new home, but watching Matthew sleep is just as sweet of a sensation in his heart, and he pulls up a chair and sits there happily for an hour more.

Perhaps Matthew felt the unearthly soul lingering in his room, for he blearily blinks his eyes open and sits up, shrugging his blanket off his shoulders. He looks around him and his violet eyes pass over Arthur's immobile figure twice before he gives up and stands to go to the bathroom, and Arthur's heart almost breaks.

After the toilet flushes and Matthew returns back to his bed, it seems as though he can no longer go back to sleep and so he flicks on a lamp and opens a book and curls up to read it. Arthur moves over to sit next to him and puts his chin gingerly on Matthew's shoulder, maybe hoping against hopes that Matthew will feel it and turn around. But he doesn't.

"That's a deep book you have there, son," Arthur murmurs as Matthew flips a page. "Very profound with big words in them."

Of course, Matthew doesn't respond, but he does reach over, passing a hand right through Arthur's abdomen, to grab at a nearby granola bar.

"What are your favourite books?" Arthur continues. "Why don't I know? Did I really used to be _that _neglectful?"

Arthur eyes the cover of the book. "_Margaret Atwood_," he reads. "You like her poems? I do, too, Matthew. My favourite one is _Shapechangers_. It's about two people who don't happen to die before their time. Their cells replace one another and they change and they grow, and isn't that beautiful? _We're footprints becoming limestone. I used to say I'd know you anywhere, but it's getting harder._"

"Taking hands like children lost in a six-dimensional forest, we step across," Matthew says suddenly, in a hushed, throaty whisper, and maybe Arthur _does_ know his son better than he thought he did. Matthew carries on to read the rest of the poem aloud, and by the time he's almost finished there are tracks of tears on his cheeks, which he wipes away carelessly with the back of his hands.

"Do you have a sweetheart?" Arthur asks quietly. "Did she break your heart? Does this poem remind you of her?"

Matthew doesn't say anything, but when Arthur looks around he sees a photo on his beside table and it's of Matthew and some girl whose face Arthur doesn't recognize. That the photo stands where it does means that nobody's heart has been particularly broken except Arthur's because Arthur wishes he'd known earlier.

"This visit was a bad idea," Arthur says brokenly.

"Yes. It's still you. It's still you," Matthew replies, closing his book and turning off his light and shutting Arthur out.

* * *

Because Arthur spent his entire first visit on Matthew, he decides to devote his next visit wholly and completely to his other son, Alfred, and he does so three weeks later.

This time he happens on Earth on a Sunday and in the morning. Alfred is also seventeen but he's not in college, much to Arthur's surprise — he's in Haiti, doing volunteer work. His group's building a school and there are beads of sweat running down Alfred's forehead but he's pulling his share of work diligently and without complaint and every once in a while he turns around to grin at the girl whom he seems most closest to — a childhood friend, Arthur recalls, whom Alfred has not seen since she moved away six years ago.

There's a ring on her finger.

"You _eloped_?" Arthur cries. "To Haiti, to do charity work? Alfred — my dear boy — I always knew you had a fiery spirit, and that you were adventurous, but to go _this far_ — you should be — you should be in school! Your father and I just barely scraped by for ten years trying to save up for your college education, and now most of it has probably gone to funding that enormous ring. I'll be telling your father about this, and then you'll have _him _to deal with —"

Arthur stops, because the whole affair has gotten him very worked up, and he tries to take deep breaths and calm himself. He smooths the front of his shirt and follows Alfred around for the rest of the morning in suppressed rage, but he makes note of every little thing Alfred does anyway and watches Alfred's every move like a hungry, starved man.

Alfred has grown a little. Arthur can tell. He's filled out a whole lot more, even though it's only been a little more than half a year. He's a bit browner and more pronounced in the chest and his shoulders are a fair bit wider. Even though Arthur's still struggling to grasp the notion that his son has run off with some lady whom he probably barely knows, abandoning his education, he's still terribly proud of how Alfred turned out. And Arthur can even respect Alfred a little for the decision he made.

"Al," his fiancée says on their break. The couple are walking around the settlement, their fingers laced together, thinking they are totally alone when Arthur's really breathing down Alfred's neck the whole time. "Al, you promised."

"I know," Alfred laughs, and Arthur considers going away because maybe the young couple has to do or say something meaningful and Arthur doesn't want to _totally _intrude upon their privacy. But then Alfred says, "But you know, there's not much to say about my old man anyway."

_He's talking about me_, Arthur realizes, because why would they be talking about the _other _old man? "You git," Arthur says crossly, feeling some satisfaction at being able to berate his son once more. "Don't you understand how rude that is?"

"Al, he didn't die that long ago," the woman says. "I know there's some part of you — some part that you're hiding because you want to be strong — that's _hurting_. And maybe it's best to get it all out."

Alfred pauses in their walk and looks up. Arthur has the faint notion that Al's trying to metaphorically _see_ his father through the clouds, even though Arthur's standing right behind him. "It was hard at first," he admits. "But life moves on, you know?"

Arthur stops; he sucks in a breath.

"I mean," Alfred continues, "All we've done — all the places we've been — you know, there's some part of me that still resents him for holding me back so much. This is what I want," he says, looking at his fiancée in the eyes and holding both her hands, "This is what I _need_ in my life. I'm no good for books and studying like Mattie is. This is where I belong — not knowing what tomorrow is going to bring, living life in its every moment, with the one person I could ever really want to be with. In some way, Dad's taught me that. Thirty-nine is a really young age to die at and all he really accomplished in life was raise two wayward sons with daddy issues and burn a record number of scones. I don't want to go down that path."

Even though the words are true, Arthur's heart plummets. Each word Alfred says is another stone in the back of Arthur's mind, a heavier load in his thoughts, and Arthur wants to chastise Alfred for speaking so ungratefully about his father, and also cry, but he can't do both at once, and he can't do one of them at all.

"Do you know what I'm saying?" Alfred says earnestly. "I don't even know what I'm saying, man."

"You miss him," his fiancée says gently.

"Of course I miss him." Alfred smiles slightly. "He was everything to me. But that's just because he didn't let me have anything else but him."

"You think he was a bad father?"

Alfred hesitates, and Arthur holds his breath.

"No," Alfred says finally. "He did his best. It just sometimes wasn't enough."

Despite how heavy Arthur's limbs feel, he extends his four hours by another hour, just so he can watch Alfred say all the wrong things that shatter him even more.

* * *

At first Arthur plans for his next visit to only be three hours long to make up for the extra hour he spent with Alfred, but once he sees Peter, he feels so bad he asks for six.

It's funny because there are some people who still don't know who Peter is — or at least, who Peter is to Arthur. One night, about eight years ago, he and Francis had a terrible fight — worse than their usual arguments — and Arthur had stormed out and spent six nights sleeping in a hotel room. He'd worried his sons sick. When he came back he'd said triumphantly to Francis' panic-stricken face: "I fucked my coworker."

He'd been ashamed of his words almost immediately not because of Francis' reaction, but because, out of the corner of his eyes, Arthur had spied young Alfred and Matthew watching them from behind a corner. They'd heard everything, and they were old enough to understand.

When Arthur heard that he had another son, about three years after the son had already been born, he decided not to tell anyone at all. The mother hadn't asked for any financial aid or that he visit Peter or that he play any role at all in Peter's life, so Arthur had used that to his advantage and never spilled a word because he could get away with it.

Peter is exactly eight when Arthur visits him. It's actually the night of his birthday, and there is no party, and there are no presents. There never were. Instead, Peter and his mother sit on the floor of a one-bedroom shack as he fiddles with her hair and she sings to him a song and rain pours outside. Arthur chokes up because these are the conditions under which his son is growing — his _flesh-and-blood_ son, unlike the twins, who were adopted — and it was his fault. He had fucked a woman he would never think twice of ever again just to get back at Francis for some petty nonsense, and these are the consequences of his actions. More than anything Arthur just wishes he could take it all back. Because he may have made some mistakes with Matthew, many mistakes with Alfred, but he sure as hell screwed it up with Peter.

Arthur watches Peter. He puts his hands in his chin and his elbows on his knees and he sits cross-legged on the floor of the dingy slum, thinking about how he was the scum of the earth. He'd only visited Peter twice in his life, and both times were at moments when Peter could not remember him. Once was right after he'd heard the news, and the other time was when Peter was five and had come down with a terrible fever and had been too sick to consciously react to outside stimuli, such as the once-in-a-lifetime visit from his absent father.

Arthur wonders how Matthew and Alfred would think of him if they knew.

"Peter," Arthur says. "I have a song for you. I learned it in the afterlife." He waits for his mother to finish with her own song before clearing his throat, and, if a little shakily, sings _Lullabye for a Stormy Night_. He's never sung before to any of his children. He knows Francis has, and that Francis had encouraged him to, but Arthur had never been a touchy-feely kind of guy and he hadn't wanted to embarrass himself. It's strange how it's only in death that Arthur has the courage to sing aloud to another person, even though that other person can't hear him.

Six hours come and go like nothing and soon Arthur is being called back into the otherworld. He goes reluctantly, and thinks about extending his time just a little bit more to make up for having missed so much of Peter's life already, but then decides better of it because he only has nine hours left and several more people to meet.

"Peter, I-I-I love you," Arthur stammers before he's taken away, and he can swear for a second that Peter whips his head up and _hears_, because his son smiles.

* * *

His next visit he spends seven hours on Earth. He'd originally planned on spending four with his brothers and four with Antonio, but he was running out of time, and so the brothers and Antonio were each unknowingly paid a visit from Arthur on the same day.

The brothers Arthur watches from a distance. He'd never been particularly close with any of them —they'd made his childhood miserable — and Arthur just wanted some form of closure on his part. They seem to be doing well. They've obviously moved on pretty quickly without him, and Arthur is in a small way glad for that. One of his brothers, though, was apparently diagnosed with cancer and had been admitted to a hospital on the seventh of April. Arthur was sorry to hear the news and less sorry that he may very well be seeing that brother in the afterlife yet.

Antonio is another problem Arthur needs to feel closure from. Antonio is also a secret Arthur had never ended up disclosing to anyone else. In college, before Arthur met Francis, he and Antonio had been fearsome rivals — to the point where Arthur, upon learning that Antonio was engaged to a boy named Francis, became determined to jeopardize their relationship in any possible way he could. He succeeded. Antonio had killed himself a year later.

Arthur feels it necessary to continue his silent vigil over Antonio's grave for however many hours he can before he has to leave. And then he remembers that he only has two hours left, so he tears himself away from Antonio's sleeping figure, and is whisked back to the afterlife.

* * *

Two hours left for Francis.

Arthur lights down on their doorstep a few minutes before sunrise. He's surprised to see Francis already dressed and at the table, alone, with a mug of coffee in his hands. Francis is — was — not an early riser. He takes his time waking up, stretching languidly and beatifically, enjoying the smaller pleasures in life. Francis has done everything right, like Arthur hasn't.

Arthur sits across from his husband and covers his hands with his own. Francis' hands are cold. He's too young to be a widow and too young to be alone. With his husband dead and Matthew at school and Alfred run off, Francis has nobody now.

Even still, Arthur can't help but feel selfish. He'd been saving Francis for last and also gave Francis the shortest visiting duration because he _knew_ something like this would happen. The moment he saw Francis' face he began to cry, giant gulps of tears pouring from his eyes like he was a little boy. He hiccuped and sobbed his way through his and Francis' quiet morning together, taking in everything _Francis_ through his water-logged eyes. Francis' cheekbones, his long hair, his unshaved face, his blue eyes.

"I've done many bad things, Francis," Arthur breathes through gulps of air. "I've ruined many people's lives. Does that make me a bad person? Because I've made stupid mistakes?"

Francis takes a sip of coffee. Arthur wants nothing more than to throw his arms around him, and breathe him in. "I wish I'd known — I wish I'd seen —"

Arthur calms himself down. He takes several deep breaths. And then he just talks.

"I'm sorry you haven't been able to move on," he says shakily. "This is my fault. I'd hoped you'd been able to find someone else, start a whole new life with them — you're still god-awfully young, Francis, you could father another son if circumstances allowed. And you'd still be a great father to them, even though you're aging and not as young as you used to be and are probably going blind." He laughs a little. "But I guess, in a way, in a horribly stupid, selfish way, I'm _glad. _I've seen many things these past seven months since I've come down to visit everyone again. I've broken people apart. Matthew has already moved on, in his own way, and Alfred resents me to a certain degree. Peter — I haven't told you about Peter — Peter will probably hate me forever the second he's old enough to know hatred. My brothers have forgotten me, and Antonio — well, I haven't seen him in the afterlife yet, but I'm sure he absolutely abhorred me in life.

"It's nice to know," Arthur quickly takes in a deep breath, "It's nice to know that at least I have _you._That it'll still take a few more years for you to get over my death, that I've left _that_ much of an impact on you. It's selfish, yeah. But that means I stood for something — meant something — that the atoms that held me together in life took up more space than they'd intended to in the beginning, even after having shrunken away knowing all the despicable things I've done.

"And you know." Arthur smiles as the first ray of sunshine makes its way through the fissures between Francis' loose hair. "You know how you're always complaining that I don't appreciate you enough, or show my appreciation for you? Well, I think it's about time I showed it —"

The sound of the doorbell interrupts Arthur's monologue. Francis pulls his hands from Arthur's as he stands up, smoothing down his shirt, and makes his way to the door. Arthur follows him cautiously, and watches.

When Francis opens the door, it's to the glowing figure of Belle, who has her hair all tied up and is wearing a skirt and high heels, looking ten years younger than her true age.

And it's only then that Arthur notices that Francis is wearing his good shirt, the one he never touches because it's so expensive. Francis is even wearing a tie — for heaven's sake, a tie on a Saturday morning when he has no work! Arthur watches, his heart clenching, as Francis bends to kiss Belle on the back of her hand and lead her in, and watches as Belle pulls from behind her back a single red rose.

"Darling, you shouldn't have."

Belle laughs, a high, clear sound, and Arthur shakes. "This means _you're_ buying lunch."

"Francis," Arthur says dangerously, inching toward the new couple. "Francis, I can't — you —"

"I'd been planning to."

"Oh, well, maybe you're buying dinner, too."

"How about I just buy you the world, my lady? What would make you happiest?"

Belle pulls him closer and he sweeps her off her feet and they crush their lips together and she whispers in his ear, "There's nothing you could give me that I don't already have," and spreads her fingers over Francis' heart.

"Francis," Arthur says, feeling himself unravel, feeling himself fall apart. How could he — how could he have moved on so fast — it's only been a little more than a year since Arthur's death — how could _Francis_, of all people, betray him in such a way? "_FRANCIS!" _

Arthur sweeps his hand across the glass models on Francis' bookshelf with such vehemence and anger that his hand actually comes in concrete contact with one of them and it tumbles to the ground and shatters and spreads itself out thin.

Francis and Belle spin around but there is nothing there that they can see but the shattered glass on the floor. They contemplate it but not for long, because it's already too late, and Arthur has been dead for thirteen months, and it's already too late.

* * *

Thirteen months ago, Arthur Kirkland was killed on his way home from work. He was crushed to death by a car that was going twenty miles over the speed limit, and he became caught between it and the wall behind him. He was pronounced dead on scene.

The overseer had said that the dead always manage to find a way of finishing their business in life. It turns out that Belle and Francis had met each other three months before Arthur was even killed, and that Francis had been moving on ever since then.

Belle also happened to be Antonio's best friend. That is, before he died. Deceased people have a funny way of influencing the living even after they're long gone.

When Arthur returns to the otherworld, it's with a heavy heart. Perhaps this was Antonio's way of getting back at him for what happened all those years ago after all.

But Arthur still has ten minutes left of his time, and he once again chooses to visit Francis — the day after the incident with Belle, because _ah, fuck it._

When he arrives on Earth, Francis is sleeping. Thankfully Belle's not in the bed with him, but Arthur knows that she's around, and that perhaps she'll be around for a long time. She's a nice woman, sweet and kind, and in a strange way Arthur even approves of her a little. Everything must somehow come back full circle in the end.

He leans over and gently kisses Francis on the forehead before backing away. To his surprise, Francis' eyes flutter open, and then widen right where Arthur is standing — as though Francis isn't, for once, seeing _through_ Arthur, but _at_ him.

"I miss you," Arthur says quietly. "I love you."

"I'm sorry," Francis whispers back, and Arthur repeats the same apology. "I wish there was a way." He blows Arthur a kiss (or at least Arthur thinks he does) and says, "Tu me manques."

Arthur laughs a little, tears dangling precariously on the ends of his lashes. "What's the best way to say goodbye in French?" he asks. "I figure if we're going to part, we might as well do this proper."

"Adieu," says Francis, simply. "_To God._"

"Adieu," Arthur repeats, his tongue feeling heavy and useless in his mouth. He doesn't say it the way Francis does because his accent is really bad but Francis laughs anyway and in that moment Arthur knows that he is loved.

As Arthur's body slowly starts to unravel, he wonders if any of this is even real. Who ever heard of a manager giving all the dead twenty-four hours to return to the land of the living, anyway? Why could Francis see him now, even though he couldn't before? What was the true purpose of these visits — to tie up loose ends, or just to give certain people a chance to say goodbye?

Arthur reaches out to Francis one last time and their fingers meet just as the last of him is vanishing. He thinks about Atwood's poem, where all the cells of a human body are constantly being replaced by others all the time, and knows that this time, it is a permanent gesture of loss. Soon he will be gone, gone, gone.

Then the last of him disappears, and Arthur knows no more; his consciousness slips away from the mortal realm, and far away the overseer laughs a childish laugh, and turns the ace of spades back into the ace of hearts.

_End_

* * *

**AN:** Funerals give the living a chance to mourn their dead. It's like the perilous threshold to the other world, a threshold that contains within it a certain amount of magic that allows a transient passing-through between the two realms so that we can say goodbye if we hadn't the chance to before. But sometimes the living aren't the only ones who need this closure.


End file.
